Jules Molenda: Technology is great - when it works

Friday

Oct 26, 2007 at 12:01 AMOct 26, 2007 at 9:37 PM

UPDATED with missing section.

The Traveler was hurrying home from the St. Louis airport. He’d taken visiting family to their flight and immediately turned around. Now the Traveler was tired. He’d paid no attention to his gas gauge until the dashboard lit up to tell him he was running low on fuel.

Jules Molenda

The Traveler was hurrying home from the St. Louis airport. He’d taken visiting family to their flight and immediately turned around. Now the Traveler was tired. He’d paid no attention to his gas gauge until the dashboard lit up to tell him he was running low on fuel.
It was already 2 a.m. and he still had several hours’ drive ahead. He got off at the next exit and pulled into a small gas station manned by an attendant locked in a cubicle. The traveler was glad to see that the pumps would take his ATM card. This won’t take long, he thought.
He inserted his card into the slot and pulled it out quickly. A message appeared: “pump off -- see attendant.” The Traveler studied a sign posted above the pump: “Gas purchased after dusk must be paid for in advance.”
He sighed and walked to the attendant booth. Inside, a pimply-faced young man with dirty hair was engrossed – in every meaning of that word – in a skin magazine. After a time, the young man looked up from his magazine.
“What’s happening, dude?” he said.
“The pump won’t take my card. It’s flashing a strange message,” the Traveler said.
“Let’s see what we got,” the attendant said. He carefully set his literature down and led the Traveler back to the pump. He inserted the Traveler’s ATM card. The message flashed “pump off -- see attendant”.
“Oh, fig,” the attendant said. (He didn’t really say “fig,” but this is a family publication.) The Traveler works for a newspaper and appreciated a ready wit and a facility with words. He smiled slightly in response, glancing at his watch.
The attendant returned to his booth and punched numbers into a panel on the counter. He returned to the pump and inserted the card once more. “Pump off -- see attendant,” came up instantly.
“Oh, fig,” the attendant said. He looked the Traveler up and down for a moment and decided, apparently, that he was trustworthy. “Go ahead and pump your gas. Pay for it when you’re done,” he said. But he took the card with him, just to be sure.
The Traveler filled his tank and walked rapidly to the booth. He stood impatiently while the attendant swiped the card across a slot in the machine on the counter. The attendant handed him back his card and punched numbers into the machine.
“Oh, fig,” he said. “It’s out of tape.”
The Traveler waited while the attendant rummaged behind the counter. He found a fresh roll of tape and carefully replaced the empty spool in the machine. According to the Traveler’s watch, 15 minutes elapsed during the process. The attendant punched a long string of numbers into the machine, then grabbed a credit card from the counter and quickly swiped it through the slot.
“Whoa – don’t you want to use my credit card?” the Traveler said.
“Oh, fig,” the attendant said, looking back and forth from the credit card in his hand to the Traveler’s ATM card as though willing them to change places. He pulled the credit slip from the machine and set it and the foreign credit card aside.
“We’ll fix this one later,” he said. “We’ll have to do yours the old-fashioned way.” He cleared a bunch of magazines off an old-model credit-card machine – the kind with a slide tray on top. He blew dust off the machine and placed the Traveler’s credit card on it. He rummaged under the counter while the Traveler drummed his fingers silently along his thigh.
Eventually, the attendant pulled up a stack of yellowing three-part forms and began writing on one of them. He wrote slowly, wielding the pen as though trying to develop a feel for the unfamiliar object in his hand. His tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth as he carefully filled in the date, the Traveler’s license-plate number, the gallons purchased and the cost. When he finished, he placed the form on the credit card machine, clicked in the purchase price and slid the tray rapidly over the form and the card. The machine caught the edge of the form, however, and tore it nearly in half.
“Oh, fig,” the attendant said. He balled up the form, threw it away and laboriously prepared a second one. This time he moved the tray slowly across the card, applying most of his body weight to the process. The machine made a perfect impression of the price and the numbers from the card but the force of the attendant’s efforts cracked the ATM card. A dime-sized piece of it was now a hanging chad.
“Oops – sorry, dude,” the attendant said as he handed back the broken card.
The Traveler sighed and quickly signed the receipt. He returned to his car and started up. He looked at his card and realized that it would no longer work in an ATM. He’d need to visit his bank to obtain a replacement. He looked at his watch and realized that he’d spent 45 minutes at the self-service island.
“Oh, fig,” he muttered as he drove away.
Contact the publisher at jmolenda@lakesunleader.com.

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